Anxiety which is given by the complex communication tool called Internet and the social media. We have become so much attached to the fetters of our mobile phone that a small interruption in the connectivity makes us anxious.
The anxiety is never about getting lost or getting hurt or something. The world is not going to fall apart if you don’t know who is doing what or what is going on around you.
Yet the fingertips have found a new muscle memory which keeps us scrolling up and down the screen like bees busying themselves at the entrance of a honeycomb.
Our necks are losing the flexion and our mind its grey matter while our eyes are getting more bad more myopic.
yet we don’t care .
We are being made to lose our sense of time, our analytics and cognitive skills . We are being facilitated with maths , methods and skills and we think of ourselves as masters of our destiny . Our cognitive skills are deteriorating because of assisted learning . The indolence has crept in our lives, our efforts have been reduced to keep us alive to everything in the world and yet know nothing . Half knowledge and overconfidence has pervaded in our psyche because we believe in everything that is aired to us .
There have been debates , discussions, deliberations being done by academicians about this new all pervading infatuation with the gadgets like smartphone but no solution is in sight .
The reason behind this unavoidable distraction lies in integration of different means of the technology into one single gadget called smart phone . The smart phone has camera , the writing pad , the video generator , the audience interface , the conference facility , the gaming tools , the search engine for knowledge and learning , the voice call and video call facility and what not .
Dependence on smart phone is not just to do work efficiently , know and learn new things and information , to communicate and get communicated , to do different tasks .
It has now become a potent tool to while away the expendable time which could have been efficiently used to explore the world physically.
The virtual interface has taken over the actual physical contact with the world which made us see , smell touch and feel things with our sensory organs .
The dependence on smartphone is complete and unequivocal, it has become a necessary evil which everyone has to be with. It will remain and its requirement is like food and shelter. Once fire and wheel changed the dynamics of humans , now the software is the augmentation that humans have invented to make
Life easy.
But , this facility is not just for enabling and efficiency . It has become a tool to tame the behaviour of everyone. An addiction that consumes both energy and time, a regressive tool in the hands of corporations that alter our mood, choices, thinking and behaviour. It loads us with entertainment, propaganda, news and views leaving us drained out to have our own opinion. It gives and forms opinion by means of content management through algorithm, search history , viewership , the like buttons , through suggestions and through censorship.
You are bombarded with the choices which are engineered to alter and modify your choices. You are reassured by the reviews that what you chose is correct and your rationale goes for the toss because the reviews itself are manipulated.
Opinions are thus shaped by the media magnates, the goods and services are provided by those who can get their items rated best by the bug called like button or data stealing.
Your personal information is traded through different platforms secretly, your choices and dislikes are shared, your closely guarded secrets are known to them and you are being manipulated.
Lastly you are so much hooked to the social media that there is a constant fear of loss of touch with the world .The constant anxiety to know what is happening, the constant tension to search what is going on. The need to keep abreast with latest, of who is doing what and why.
A constant fear of missing out on something
A new fear of a monster called missing out .
A fear of missing out . (FOMO)

Author is a SSP Traffic Srinagar